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A better day

I’m keeping quiet about my enjoyment of the heat. So many are grumbling about it – thunderstorms due over the weekend, so at least there will be something new to grumble about. It’s why the English love our weather.

My last weekly Friday meeting with the Acting Head. I hugged and thanked her at the end – it’s been pretty tricky, with various events beyond anyone’s control (such as the flooding in last week’s rainstorm – the good news there is that we’ve got the grant for a new roof and the builder can do it over the summer) but she’s done superbly well and we have also got to know each other better and that has been a pleasure too.

I had to be back by 11 for our appointment with the psychiatric nurse – in fact, I was back by ten to, and drove in our drive behind her. She was lovely, we both liked her. And, having talked for quite a long time to both of us, she concluded that, in her opinion, R’s illness is not caused by mental problems, depression or a breakdown. I have thought about it a lot myself, doing my best to take a mental step back and consider it dispassionately, and I had reached that conclusion too – with evidence, obviously, because I’ve done a lot of evaluating over the years and am quite good at it. He is pretty low now, of course, but that’s the effect of the weight loss, not the cause of it, we believe.

Not that this takes us any further, and we still have no diagnosis. But R was able to eat a few chocolate digestives this afternoon and ate a pretty good dinner, with the result that I felt able to eat as well.

So things are pretty good at the Zeddery this evening – not that there’s any more nor less reason to be optimistic, but I take a good day and appreciate it, without expectations one way or the other.

When my mother was very up and down in health, she went from optimism to gloom, because she never learned to be realistic. On a good day, she would hope that everything would go swimmingly from then on, on a bad one she would despair. I asked her to try not to project forward, but to accept each day, knowing that a bad day wouldn’t last forever and a good one should be enjoyed for itself, but she was almost wilfully against that. She equated realism with pessimism, but it isn’t really. She’d have called herself an optimist, but she was so hopelessly unrealistic that she was constantly being disappointed. I’m better being calm and cheerful whenever possible – and, when it isn’t, I try to be patient.

And isn’t that all easy to say? Hah. Have a good weekend, darlings.

A few photos to finish with –

Selfie with new summer dress. Yes, it is unsuitably short. I don’t care. 60 is the new 80 as far as I’m concerned.

I’m doing my best with the artichokes, but some of them are flowering before I can eat them. However, the flowers are spectacular and bumble bees and butterflies love them.

The bed in front of the wall is in its third year and it’s been lovely. It still looks pretty good.
We’re not quite keeping pace with the chickens. This is this week’s surplus – not quite true, R had three eggs for supper and I had two; all the same, we have at least six surplus eggs a day. I shall have to give some away over the weekend.

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9 comments on “A better day”

Taking every day (or every hour) as it comes can be difficult if you’re full of expectations. As you say, you have to drop the expectations and just go with the flow. I’m usually quite good at that, but I do sometimes assume that a bad morning will turn into a bad day, even though the assumption is based on nothing whatever.

Very true that if you can’t be calm and cheerful, the important thing is to be patient.

Expectations have to be based on something and my mum pinned all her hopes on something that couldn’t possibly happen. It wasn’t until she was told she was terminally ill that she was able to relax and enjoy the life she had, paradoxically enough.

I’m pleased to read that Russell has eaten something… and that you have too.
Meanwhile, WHAT HEAT??? It’s been nice over this way, but nothing out of the ordinary, I didn’t even get the storm last night! But I’m not one to grumble….
Sx

Sorry, I obviously haven’t been following properly or I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn about R’s health problems. Do hope things improve and that he keeps eating.
Wow, I’m impressed with your girls’ egglaying. I’m lucky to get one or two a day (sometimes none at all) but then I’m down to seven laying hens at present ( some of them quite old ladies) because Beattie and Henrietta are broody and Briony is looking after her chicks.

We’ve got 29 hens, but some of the older ones rarely, if ever, lay – or so I suspect. I’ve had as many as 18 eggs in a day, but it’s usually about a dozen at the moment. Of course, they’ll all go off lay together before long! I’m not letting any sit on eggs, I can’t let the flock increase – I’d prefer to have fewer, in the long term. Russell just can’t resist letting a few eggs hatch each year because he so loves the chicks, and the bantams are excellent mothers.

The Unobservant Eye of Z

Dramatis personae:
My husband, Lovely Tim or LT for short (though he is actually tall).
My late husband, the Sage, aka Russell.
My children: Dearest daughter Weeza, who has London Ways, is married to Phil. Their daughter is Zerlina Buttercup and their son is Augustus Bufo. Elder son - Al X, is married to Dilly. Their children are Squiffany Virgilia, Maximus Pugsley and Hadrian Swallow. Younger son - Ro married to Dora and their two-year-old is Rufus Russell.
Big Sister: Wink. She lives in Wiltshire, 230 miles away, but we're much closer than that.
We live with our cat Eloise, a black tortoiseshell half-Ragdoll.
Bantams live in the garden and cats live in the barns but we feed them and they have ambitions to be pets too. In addition, cows come to visit in the summer. Mostly, they stay in the fields. None of them has got a hoof in the door yet.
There is an annexe to the house, where Roses lives and her beloved, Lawrence, spends a lot of time there. Her son, Boy, lives there too.

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Updating takes too much memory, sorry - but then I'm not very young any more, so am hanging on to the memory I've got. Please don't look for any significance in the order - I'm not drunk but I am disorderly.

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